My nipples were as raw as my clit when I finally awoke without the haze of heat fogging my mind some days later.
Behind me, cool flesh pressed against my back, rising and falling with the rhythm of Grim’s steady breaths. He’d slung an arm over my midriff, cocooning me with his chilly body, and I hummed a small sound of appreciation.
As far as heats went, having my mate regulate the awful, feverish temperature hike had been a godsend.
Mate.
I prodded gently at the new bond in my chest—the only one that wasn’t a dark, festering wound. Grim murmured in response, tightening his grip on me, and I eased off our connection with a smile.
I’d not been prepared for how… good it’d feel.
My other four mating bonds had come with pain and angst. I’d expected Grim, of all people, to give me a bond barbed with broken glass and darkness. I’d expected pain and misery, not… this.
I pressed a hand to my ribs and closed my eyes, focusing on the soft glow of it. Peaceful.
He’d fought it at first, but his surrender had been swift and complete. It still took my breath away to recall those moments when his magic had been within me and I’d felt whole in a way I hadn’t expected to.
Soulmates, he’d called us. Was that why it felt like this? So… smooth. As if we were already carved from the same piece, so slotting together was friction-free.
Well. In spirit, at least.
I grimaced at the throbbing down below. Reluctant as he may have been, Grim had given in to his primal side as fully as any of my other mates. It still baffled me to know that the cold, withdrawn man, the dark god of mist and shadow, possessed a passion so fiery.
And that he had a proclivity for breasts.
“You’ve been awake for several minutes and no one’s copulating. Am I to take it your brain is back in charge?”
Mimir’s dry voice made me jolt—and wince, thanks to my sore abdominal muscles—and whip around. The prophet’s head sat where I’d left him some time ago, on a skin on the floor. Staring right at me and Grim.
“You watched?” I hissed, heat that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with mortification rising all the way from my toes to my cheeks.
He arched both bushy eyebrows. “Of course.”
“What happened to having no such inclinations?” I snapped. I’d forgotten all about him. I’d forgotten all about everything, save Grim, but I really, really wished I’d at least had the wherewithal to turn Mimir’s head in the opposite direction before surrendering to my heat.
“Ah. I find no personal pleasure in it, but I do admit the act is… fascinating to watch. Besides, it wasn’t like there were a lot of other entertainment options these past three days.”
“I told you you should have left him outside in the mud,” Grim rumbled sleepily behind me. The cool arm around my midriff withdrew, followed by the comfortable pressure against my back as he sat up.
A jolt of… not anxiety, but nervous energy perhaps, flickered through my gut. He was awake. And no longer deep in rut.
Slowly I turned toward him, ignoring the pervert prophet.
“Hi,” I said softly. I took in his sleepy expression, so unexpected on his ice-carved features. He still looked every inch the cold, dark god, but somehow… more human now. As if he was finally allowing me to see past the barriers.
Grim only tilted his head in response, his eyes sweeping over me, taking in my swollen nipples and lips before dipping to the many bruises on my hips and ribs where he’d gripped me so, so tight.
“My heat’s over,” I said, though I didn’t need to. The times I’d woken before him during my few fitful spurts of sleep these past days, I’d taken him inside of me before he was even awake.
“Are you all right?” he rumbled, reaching one hand out to trace a particularly dark set of bruises along my ribs.
The brush of his skin against mine made me shiver—not so much with desire now, but pure awareness. His nearness sparked something in me, made me lean toward his touch as if pulled by a magnetic force.
“Yeah. A bit sore. Nothing unusual.” I bit my lip and looked up at him through my lashes, an odd sense of shyness setting in. The intimacy we’d shared had been so intense, but now, without the insanity of my heat, it felt… intimidating.
I forced myself to recall the sensation of it, of melding into one with him, and steeled myself. It wasn’t just about us. I’d made the bargain with him because I needed this connection. Shying away from it now that I had it was folly.
Before I could change my mind, I leaned forward and planted my lips against Grim’s.
The alpha started at my sudden assault, but when he raised his hand, it wasn’t to push me away. He wove his strong fingers into my messy hair, cupping the back of my head as he parted his lips and kissed me back.
His cool breath mingled with mine, shivers shooting down my spine as our bond hummed. Grim rumbled an appreciative note and snaked his other hand around my back to pull me in closer.
So easy. This was… so easy. Like two streams of liquid metal pouring into the same mold, forming into one.
I don’t know if I pulled or he pushed, but when Grim’s tongue flicked over mine, I was on my back on the sleeping skin, my mate settling his hips between my spread thighs. Warmth fluttered in my core, the absence of my heat doing nothing to quell my desire for him. Judging from the cool, hard column of flesh pressing against my navel, it did nothing to quell his either.
“Much as I hate to interrupt two lovebirds, I do feel it prudent to remind you that we have places to be—and an ever-narrowing window of time to get there,” Mimir said, shattering the cocoon of quiet wonder wrapped around me and my mate.
I froze, my fingers tightening on Grim’s black locks enough to make him grimace. I’d forgotten we weren’t alone. Again.
Grim lifted his head and gave the prophet a glare. “I find the concept of your use as a troll’s ball increasingly fascinating.”
“Mimir’s right,” I said, releasing my grip on his hair to pat at his shoulders. “We’ve already spent so much time. We don’t know when it’ll be too late to stop Ragnarök, nor how long it’ll take to get back.”
Grim shifted his gaze to mine. A flicker of darkness passed over his mismatched eyes, but it was gone before I could fully register it. “You should rest for a few days. I sense your… fatigue.”
I shot him a wry smile. “I don’t think being worn out from a sex marathon is enough reason to leave the end of the world to do its thing. I do need a quick rinse, though. Do you think we can find a safe stream? I’m… sticky.”
His eyes darted to the apex of my thighs where proof of our coupling clung to my skin. “I find my essence on you… appealing.”
I snorted at his somewhat bemused tone. He seemed to not be entirely sure why he found his spent seed caked on my skin appealing.
“That’s great, but I am not walking around like a bukkake fantasy to placate your instincts. C’mon, let’s find somewhere troll-free to get washed up before we get moving.”
Grim watched over me as I bathed in a shallow creek by the cave we’d spent the past few days in. I felt his eyes on my skin as a physical caress. It warmed my body like rays of sun, and I hummed with pleasure. Who knew? Who could have ever known that mating Grim would bring me such… pure joy?
I shot a grateful thought down the bond between us, but instead of a warm response, I was met with dark nothingness.
Frowning, I pulled my consciousness back. Okay, so it was probably too much to expect that the cool, complex man who’d only ever loved his brothers would open up completely so soon. My other bonds had taken some time to fall into sync too.
Sighing, I finished up in the creek and waded to shore, shooting my silent, brooding mate a gentle smile as I got dressed. He had scars. Bad enough he’d killed me rather than willingly surrender to our shared fate. But he was mine now, and that was all I needed. I could be patient with him.
Once I was dressed, I turned to Mimir—who’d also had a quick dip in the creek to get rid of the leftover mud from his tumble a few days ago. I’d washed him before I bathed myself, mostly because it’d seemed the right thing to do for a prophet. “Where are we going?”
“Farther inland,” he said. “If we make good pace, we should be there in a day or two.”
“How long until we’re out of troll territory?” I asked, directed at Grim this time.
He shrugged. “I am not familiar with the area, but if the landscape turns less rocky, we should at least be free of mountain trolls. Not that there aren’t plenty of other creatures to be wary of.”
The surly note to his voice made my cheeks heat a bit. “I’m sorry about the Nightmare.”
Mimir scoffed. “How quickly you forget why we had to call on her services. Your mate did everything in his power to keep you from escaping. We did what we had to.”
“Yeah, well, I can still be sorry.” I sighed and looked to Grim. He didn’t meet my gaze, his attention focused up the path. “We have a tough journey ahead, but we will get there. Together.”
Neither of them responded.
I tried to reach out through my new bond a few times while we hiked through the rocky hills and down into the deeper woodlands, but Grim kept the connection shut.
I hadn’t even realized that was an option—my bonds to my four other mates had been a constant flow, when I was still alive. Painful and confusing a lot of the time, but always open.
I didn’t ask him why he shut me out—he would open up to me again when he was ready—but his ability to control our bond made me think of Loki’s comments about his youngest son. How he was the one with the greatest gift of magic.
When we made camp underneath a weeping willow late that night and I’d perched Mimir on a log by the fire, I walked over to where Grim was busying himself with sharpening his blades and sat down by his side, close enough that my knee bumped into his.
He looked up at me, the slide of his whetstone pausing as he took me in with unreadable blankness.
“Hey,” I said.
He didn’t respond, but kept his attention on me.
“I was wondering… all this magic business. Modi taught me a few things, but I’m still not super-skilled. Do you think maybe you could teach me? It’d probably be helpful if I had a bit more control. And knowledge.”
Shadow danced in Grim’s eyes as he held my gaze for a long second. Then he returned his focus to his blades, resuming the slick slide of stone over metal. “It takes years upon years of study and practice to master the art of magic. Once this is all over… If we are still here, I will teach you then.”
I frowned. “I don’t expect to master it, but it’s not going to do much good to wait until after we’ve stopped Ragnarök. I need all the skill I can scrape together, and as quickly as possible. I know I have the raw power, but that’s only going to go so far. You saw how helpless I was against that first troll.”
When the word helpless left my lips, Grim’s arm paused its sliding motion again, his muscles trembling ever so slightly. Something like an echo resonated in our bond, but was gone just as quickly.
“Just the basics,” I pressed. “Maybe something to help me not burn out so fast. Though… I’m not opposed to your help in replenishing my energy either.”
Grim finally looked back at me, eyebrows raised, and I gave him a grin.
“Only if you want to, of course.”
His lips flattened disapprovingly, but I saw the flash of heat in his eyes before he sighed and returned to his work. “Fine.”
“Fine, you’ll teach me, or fine, you’ll… replenish me?”
“I will teach you. The basics,” he emphasized. “First lesson: You open yourself too wide when your use your magic. It comes out too unfocused, and you have to use more of it to get enough power behind you. Envision a narrow keyhole. Push your magic through it—laser-focus it.”
“Now?” I asked.
“Unless you have something better to do.”
I glared, but he was still looking at his daggers. It seemed our mating hadn’t killed off the part of his personality that caused him to be a prick when he wanted to be.
“Okay. Fine.” I got up and turned my back to the campfire, surveying our surroundings for an impromptu target dummy.
“The rocks by the brambles,” Grim said. “Drill a hole through the biggest one. All the way through and no wider than an acorn.”
It was a lot more difficult than it sounded. He was right—up until now, I’d pretty much slung my magic at whatever target, hoping the sheer mass of it would do the job. Trying to focus the thrumming power and channel it into a keyhole-sized beam was… difficult.
The boulder had several scorch marks and large chunks missing before I collapsed by the fire two hours later, as exhausted as if I’d run a marathon. But it also had a jagged hole only slightly larger than an acorn running at least halfway through.
Grim, who’d otherwise ignored me, got up and went over to inspect my work.
“You need to be consistent. You let your magic overwhelm you several times—the unevenness shows every time you lost control,” he said.
“But I did last a lot longer than I’d normally have,” I countered.
“And yet you didn’t manage to complete the task. There’s still nearly a foot of rock left to drill through. It shouldn’t have taken you more than a few minutes.”
I blew a raspberry. “You really need to work on your feedback skills. Have you ever heard of positive reinforcement? I’m entirely beat and very proud of myself, and here you are, pooping all over my efforts. Not cool.”
Grim moved across the soft grass, coming to a stop by my side. He looked down at me, collapsed on my back underneath the willow tree, eyebrows furrowing. “You spent most of your energy on this?”
“Well… yeah. Mostly. I still have a bit left, but—”
His frown deepened, nostrils pulling up a quarter of an inch. “And what are you planning to do if we are attacked again? Throw rocks? Second lesson, though it really shouldn’t need to be said: Never leave yourself depleted unless you absolutely have to.”
“You set the task,” I reminded him. I might have gained a softer touch when it came to my brusque new mate, but it was still pretty insulting to be talked to as if I were a complete idiot.
“Clearly I overestimated your abilities. It won’t happen again,” he snapped.
“You’re such a prick.” Annoyed as I was, there wasn’t any true venom in my words, mostly because I was too tired to argue with him.
Grim gave me a dark look, then began unfastening the straps holding his armor in place.
“What are you doing?” I asked, arching an eyebrow when he threw his chest piece and tunic to the ground next to me, revealing a whole lot of icy skin and rippling abs.
“You need your powers replenished,” he said flatly.
“Oh.” Despite the rush of nerves awakening in my abdomen at the implication of that statement, I cracked a grin at him. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re working on your positive reinforcement skills after all.”
Grim only arched an eyebrow at me before he began working on his belt.
“Can you turn her over so I get the head end this time?” Mimir’s dry voice cracked through our little camp, jolting my gaze from what Grim’s hands were doing back to the prophet. “I think I’ve had quite my fill of your backside, Lokisson.”
“Oh. My God.” If the soil underneath me could have opened up and swallowed me whole, I would have felt nothing but gratitude. I really, really needed to stop forgetting that we weren’t alone every time my ovaries took over.
Grim, pants open and halfway down his hips, turned around and stalked to the other side of the fire, where he grabbed Mimir by the skull and turned him around to face away from the camp.
“Now, now, I didn’t say I didn’t want to watch. Just that there is only so much of a man’s thrusting buttocks I can take,” Mimir protested.
Grim didn’t respond. He returned to me and continued to push off his boots and shove his trousers down his thighs, baring his body entirely, save the linen breeches covering his privates.
“Uh, yeah, no,” I said, reaching up a hand to stop him when he hooked his thumbs in his breeches. “We are not… doing that with an audience. Again.”
“Then how do you propose to regain your strength?” Grim asked, as nonplussed as if we were discussing the weather.
“I…” I grimaced and shot a look at the back of Mimir’s head. “Maybe I’ll recover with some sleep.”
Grim only snorted and shoved his underwear down, exposing that mouthwatering cock of his already half-erect. It grew rapidly before my eyes, momentarily distracting my protests.
“You didn’t seem to mind an audience that last night in Valhalla,” he said, brushing a hand up the length of my thigh before reaching for the waist of my leather pants.
Heat gathered in my cheeks. “I wasn’t given much of a choice,” I muttered, though truthfully, it wasn’t like I’d been particularly bothered. I’d just been so relieved to be back with my mates.
“Then perhaps consider that you don’t have much of one now either,” he murmured, enough heat lacing through his words to ease the sting of the threat in them.
I lifted my brows. “Oh? Feeling up for a bit of forced ravishment, are we?”
It was meant as a playful taunt, but Grim’s hands stilled on my belt, his eyes darting to mine. Shadows flickered in them when he said, so quietly it could have been a whisper, “Without your powers, you are vulnerable. If you will not yield, I… will still do what I must.”
“Grim.” I forced my tired muscles to contract so I could sit up, propping myself on one elbow and reaching for him with my free hand. I pressed my palm against his chest right where our quiet bond attached below his ribs, his coldness leaching into my skin. “I won’t ever make you do that. I promise.”
My other mates liked it with an edge of reluctance. I suspected they enjoyed the opportunity to show me their strength and dominance, that my submission was all the sweeter if it came hard won. And, truth be told, I liked that too. But Grim?
He might have all the alpha instincts, and he’d certainly shown me his dominant side while he rutted me through my heat, but his scars… Those awful memories still haunted him, no matter how much he pretended they didn’t.
No, the idea of a reluctant partner did not delight him. That he was telling me he would do it anyway was only proof how fundamentally our mating had rocked him. He would rather break himself apart than leave me defenseless.
I pushed up fully and embraced him, pressing my face into the crook of his neck.
He sat frozen for several long breaths, a statue carved from ice—unsure of how to respond, I realized.
“Hug me,” I mumbled, rubbing my nose against his shoulder.
Hesitantly, he obeyed. I hummed a pleased note and skimmed my lips over the muscle that connected his shoulder to his neck.
Grim trembled under me, a soft gasp blowing against the top of my head. I smirked and let my tongue flick out to tease that same spot.
My mate responded with a groan, strong arms tightening around my body to the point of pain.
“You feel… so much,” he rasped against my scalp. “Every touch of you is… amplified.”
I let my hands find his back and trailed one finger down the length of his spine in response. He shuddered again, cool breath huffing out against my ear. His hands found my feathered top, and with a few yanks on straps, he pulled it off me, throwing it to the ground with little care for the invaluable leather. When he closed his arms tight around me again, I was the one to shiver as his icy skin enveloped me from all sides.
Grim released me as if he’d been burned. “I’m… sorry.”
I arched my eyebrow at the unexpected apology. “For what?”
In his usual style, he didn’t respond—only closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, it took me a second to realize I no longer felt the chill of him radiating out.
Frowning, I put a hand on his chest. No sensation of temperature met me. He’d… magically nullified his natural chill? To not cause me discomfort?
“Don’t do that,” I said softly, spreading my fingers out over one hard pec. “I want to feel you.”
“You’re no longer in heat,” he countered. “It will be… unpleasant. To mate.”
“I like it—your coldness. Nothing feels right here. Even the water is just… nothing. You’re the only thing that doesn’t feel wrong. It reminds me that I’m not dead. Not fully,” I said. I stroked my hand over his chest for emphasis. When my thumb brushed over his nipple in the process, his entire body trembled underneath me, his eyes squeezing shut. A soft moan echoed in the space between us.
With another breath, he opened those mismatched eyes again. They seemed to bore into mine, into my soul, as if he was searching for something. Slowly, coldness radiated against my palm and up through my thighs.
I smiled and rubbed his nipple again, but he was apparently prepared this time, because he only narrowed his eyes in response.
“Is that how you blended into the human world? You would… dim yourself when taking a girl to bed?” I asked. I don’t know why the question popped into my head—and I certainly don’t know why I asked it right then. The thought of Grim between some nameless, faceless girl’s thighs had acid churn in my gut, some of my own desire waning.
“I never did,” he said. Something in his tone made me think he’d sensed my idiotic jealousy even through the wall he’d put up between our connection.
I grimaced. “I shouldn’t have asked. Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
Grim’s eyes flickered from mine down to my breasts. When he reached for one, I gasped at the coldness of his touch, my nipple puckering into a tight tip.
“I sometimes felt you. When you climaxed. On your own, or with someone,” he said, rubbing one thumb over my peaked nipple and drawing another shudder from me. “This… trickle of pleasure. It was the only times I felt the call to copulate. But I never yielded.”
I frowned, some of my attention scattering for every cool touch against my achingly tight nipple. I probably should have been embarrassed that he’d felt me in such intimate, private moments, but I wasn’t. “Why not? Bjarni and Saga… I’m sure they… enjoyed themselves while they waited for me.”
He didn’t look up from my breasts, but I still saw the dark flicker passing over his features. And then it clicked. Like it should have before I’d even opened my mouth in the first place.
“Oh, Grim,” I whispered, the ache in my heart withering the tendrils of desire his thumb had awakened. I’d had some hazy idea that maybe he’d been like Modi, unwilling to risk offspring, but no. “Of course. I’m so sorry. That was… thoughtless.”
“I’m not broken, Annabel.” Grim looked up then, and to my surprise his eyes weren’t coolly distant like I’d expected, but mildly annoyed. “I don’t think of her when I’m inside of you.”
“How can you not?” Shame made me look away. I’d done what I did because it was the only way, but… “I blackmailed you, just like her.”
He snorted and grabbed my other breast with his free hand, pushing both up and out in lewd invitation. “No,” he said, and then closed his lips around my unattended nipple.
I drew in a sharp breath, my hands flying to his hair without conscious thought. He flicked his tongue over the tight bud before he sucked, deeply.
My pussy tightened and my clit sang, scattering my focus and driving away the clenching guilt from my chest.
“There was no pleasure,” he murmured against my breasts. “Only submission.”
I slid my fingers down to cradle the back of his head as he suckled, skimming my lips over his scalp.
“I’ll kill her,” I whispered into his hair. “For what she did to you.”
“If I wanted her dead, I would have killed her myself,” he said, lifting his head to meet my gaze. “She is my brothers’ mother.”
“And you don’t want to cause them pain,” I said, placing a kiss on his forehead. “My noble, kindhearted mate.”
He chuffed a laugh, bitterness drawing his mouth into a line. “No one’s ever called me that before. Calculated, yes. Weak. Miserable. Grim. And here you are, little mortal, with your soft human heart, lost in the depths of Hel because I killed you… and you’re calling me noble?”
I flushed. “Yeah, well, I’m not saying I’m pleased about that, but you did it for your brothers. I get it. What matters is that you’ve realized you were wrong and are helping to rectify it.”
The wry smirk slid off his face, his features turning stony. But in his eyes, hunger flared. My pussy clenched on instinct, slickness gathering deep in my core.
Without another word, Grim slid his hands to my hips and shoved me to the ground hard enough to force a huff from my lungs. A yank around my waist ripped my trousers down my thighs past my knees. I tried to sit up to push them all the way off and kick off my boots, but Grim fell on top of me before I could so much as get up on my elbows, settling his hips against mine.
I gasped softly at the chill of his skin pressed against everywhere I was bared, and again—sharper—when he pressed the thick head of his cock against my lower lips.
I stared up at him, up at the simmering darkness in his eyes as he took me in. Then he forced himself inside of me in one hard push, penetrating me all the way to my womb.
I shrieked, my body entirely unprepared for the suddenness of his entry, even though I was wet enough to take him. My pussy shuddered around his girth, stretching to fully accommodate him inside of me. Where his coldness had felt like a blessing during my heat, my body was decidedly more susceptible to it now, muscles contracting hard as my nipples and clit tightened.
It was still delicious, but also… different. More raw. Bordering on painful.
“You yield so prettily,” Grim rasped. He was panting even as he held perfectly still inside of me, shudders traveling through his body every time my pussy fluttered on his cool length. “So perfectly. You feel it, don’t you? How entirely, excruciatingly defenseless you are underneath me. How fully you let me in.
“You may have blackmailed me, Annabel, but you are the one who surrenders when we fuck.”
He gave me a slow, full roll of his hips that made me hiss and cling to his biceps, nails digging in to keep me anchored to reality.
“I could harm you so, so easily. I could make this hurt. Make you plead for me to stop. And yet you lay with me so entirely willingly. Eagerly.” He bent his head to the side of my neck, drawing in a deep lungful before he brushed his lips against my ear and whispered, “Perhaps it will ease your guilt if I tell you that nothing in the nine worlds feels like your sheath clutching me like your life depends on how deeply I penetrate you.”
I groaned out something that could have been an agreement. Holy hell, where did he learn to talk dirty? My body lit up like a torch, everywhere he touched me inside and out so very alive, as if life itself welled from our entwined bodies.
Grim rolled his hips again, a lazy movement that drew a groan from my throat. “Do you know how many nights I have stroked myself to release, remembering how your scent bloomed around me when you came into my stables that first day? How often I’ve imagined what it would have felt like if I fucked you up against the kitchen counter that first night?
“I’ve cursed your name for how you make me want, mate. So no, taking you is nothing like fucking her.” He punctuated his statement with a hard thrust that made me arch and dig my nails deeper into his shoulders. And another.
“Grim!”
“You sing my name so beautifully,” he growled into my ear, his cool breath sending shivers down my neck even as I writhed at the violence of his penetration. “It was given to me to warn of my gruesome nature, yet you make it sound like the gentlest caress. Do you know how badly I ache for you every time it spills from your lips?”
“I ache for you too,” I gasped, breaking on a moan when he took another rough stroke in my pussy. “I need you. Oh. God, yes! I need you!”
His lips danced over mine, featherlight at first, then deeper. Hungrier. I moaned into Grim’s mouth, my breath hitching with every roll of his hips. Every cell in my body was alight with him, every nerve tense and frayed. He was so cold inside of me, but that couldn’t extinguish the heat in my core.
Grim let out a strangled groan, and then darkness spilled through our bond and into me.
Heat. Bliss. Mate. Images and words that didn’t belong to me tumbled through my mind as Grim released the block on our bond, his thoughts like soothing caresses.
“Yes,” I groaned. “Yes, yes. More, baby. Yes.” I wrapped myself around his presence inside of me, hugged him to my chest and tried to bracket his hips with my legs to pull him tighter still, but my knees were trapped in my trousers.
Grim obeyed me nonetheless. His thrusts came harder, the darkness inside of me swelling as it wrapped around my light, while one hand traveled down my stomach to the apex of my thighs. I keened when he reached my clit, ripping my mouth from his as I threw my head back against the dirt beneath us.
He circled my pulsing nub with rapid, tight movements, as if he knew exactly what I needed, and in response the fire in my core rose through me like a tidal wave.
An image of my face screwed up in pained bliss flickered through our bond. Can’t hold back. Can’t. Can’t.
“Do it! Grim, do it!” I shrieked and arched my pelvis up high as every muscle in my body locked up. Release tore through my spine, blinding me to anything but the ecstasy of coming on his pounding cock.
Grim snarled, a savage sound, and slammed his cock all the way to my cervix through clenching muscles protesting the forced stretch. A stretch that quickly became so much more intense when the bottom of his shaft swelled.
“Shit!” I’d asked for it, and even as I clawed at his shoulders and writhed to escape the inevitable, some dark, primal part of my mind thrilled as my pussy lost the battle against his knot and yielded to the stretch.
Grim’s groan of pleasure mixed with my pained howl, the thick bulge forcing its way in behind my pelvic bone and locking us together.
My muscles contracted again, forcing a mewl from my throat when the pressure of it pushed hard against my G-spot. I was already coming again when Grim pressed his thumb against my clit, taking my orgasm into the skies.
I cried out his name and heard mine echo through my mind in return. Cool semen bathed my cervix, making my pussy spasm around his knot again. My G-spot shuddered at the renewed pressure, and I seized up in another bone-shattering release spurred by Grim’s constant circles on my swollen clit.
Tenderness swarmed my mind, a mixture of my own endorphin-fueled emotions and his, soothing the physical roughness of the knotting. I clung to him, moaning his name as I rode the waves of pained pleasure, my ecstasy-addled thoughts blending into his.
I was halfway to oblivion when another image flickered through my mind. It was of me in my feathered leathers, sitting on a throne of bones, a skull in one hand and a still-beating heart in the other. Behind me, a sentinel half-hidden in shadows stood guard.
Grim.
“W-What was that?” I groaned, the imagery different enough from all the sex-addled thoughts we’d shared it sobered me.
Grim’s only response was to press his thumb hard against my clit and rock his hips into mine, and my thoughts scattered to the wind as my body seized with another climax.
By the time sleep finally stole me away, I’d forgotten all about that unsettling image.